While the Make in India scheme was launched way back in 2014, it was only off-late during 2020 that saw India truly realize the vision. It was a landmark year filled with many feats starting with when India replacing Vietnam as the second largest producer of mobiles in the only behind China.

Samsung, Vivo, Micromax, Xiaomi and Spice Group all stepped up to the plate and got themselves into initiatives such as HMD Global (Nokia) and Wistron (HTC, Motorola, Blackberry). The crowning news was the announcement of the production of iPhones in India. The COVID-19 crisis led to the world being less reliant on the Chinese supply chain networks and that’s where India stepped in.

Another win was Tesla’s emergence as the most valuable auto company in the world. If the future is electric vehicles, then Elon Musk’s vision is very important for India as well. Tesla finally registered itself in India, with an R&D centre ready to come up in the near future in Bengaluru along with a car manufacturing unit in Karnataka also.  Amazon too, announced that Fire TV stick devices would be made in India and more consumer products would follow suite. Foxconn is also set to play an integral role in many of the manufacturing plans. Amazon is also pushing through in its $2.8 billion cloud plan for India as we get our second AWS cloud computing region, and we are heading to be one of the important players with the US in this front.

The government recently cleared Rs. 12,195 crore Production Linked Incentive norms over 5 years for the telecom and network equipment manufacturers. India is now ready to penetrate both 4G and 5G equipment with a focus on the Internet of Things or IoT devices. Both Jio and Airtel had claimed they can come out with 5G services by the end of this year or the beginning of the next one. The ball is now in the government’s court when it comes to deciding on 5G’s auction.

The government in addition to that, also came out with a 4-year Rs 7,350 crore PLI for IT hardware and this will cover things like servers, PCs, laptops and tablets. As per the official statement, this It will lead to production valued at Rs 3.26 lakh crore with exports valued at Rs 2.45 lakh crore. The combined direct and indirect revenue is expected to be in somewhere around Rs 15,760 crore and the time period is expected to generate 1.8 lakh jobs.

There are other small changes like allowing local players to get into the mapping business. Flipkart backed MapMyIndia and ISRO, to name a few that are getting together for one such venture. To add to this with the Indian GPS satellite plan, and we may no longer need Google Maps in the distant future.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented a for the first time ever a paperless digital budget from a “Made in India” tablet device this year. The budget also looked to improve on digital payments and framing policies for building data parks. The government also presented the the Cryptocurrency and the Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill, 2021 to “Create a facilitative framework for creation of the official digital currency to be issued by the Reserve Bank of India.”

While 2020 was a great year for Make in Tech India vision, 2021 may prove to be even better.